If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
If so many Christians were so easily swayed by hateful propaganda then that's still a fault and failure of the religion, as is the utter failure of the "good" Christians to do anything about it. People aren't machines that blindly process inputs into outputs, at least not in any useful sense that takes morality and ethics into account. People have agency, they're responsible for their own decisions. And these people have a Bible probably at arms reach at all times and they know what it says.
What do you mean by this? I use AI both personally and for work but I'm not conflicted at all about its use for things we generally agree are harmful.
This feels like someone wanted to slander the US military actions, could only find one unambiguously negative thing, so then they pontificated on that.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=27.10983&mlon=57.08475&z...
After first looking at the map, I was quite surprised as it wasn't mentioned in the news.
Why is a school basically located on a military area, and not in a residential area?
If a soldier on the ground had called in the airstrike, there is a good chance they would be in military prison.
The fact that the administration itself did it means nothing will happen.
Always know what you're shooting at, especially if it changed purposes over a decade ago.
No, they wouldn't and neither would they in any other military; most militaries don't punish most war crimes let alone what looks like negligence.
That doesn't make them automatically wrong. This is clearly a crime against humanity.
> It is like asking ADL if something is antisemitism
There is a huge difference between hating Jews and condemning the actions of the Israeli government in occupied Palestine and the support it has from other countries.
Do you not want to see accountability for that? Are you not pro-life?
>Following the United States and Israeli attacks on 28 February, the mission found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects.
The attacks were obviously not indiscriminate. Indiscriminate is covering an area with napalm and throwing a match.
Why not? This is not the perspective of the various international agreements the US has signed about war. Knowing what you are shooting is in fact an obligation.
Hell, knowing what you are shooting is an obligation of deer hunters in my state. If you shoot someone because you thought they were a deer, you are in trouble even if they weren't wearing an orange vest.
The reason this obligation exists is because you always have the option to not shoot. If you do not know accurate info about what you are shooting at, you are supposed to not shoot at it.
You caring more about munitions than the lives of innocent children says a lot about who you are.
Christianity itself really has little to do with it. I think it's more so that "Christian" is just the default cultural identity and worldview of native born Americans who have zero self awareness, thoughtfulness, or perspective on the world. Almost none of them actually believe anything really when you start to ask questions about it. It's just the in-group that they latch on to because they've never had an independent thought in their lives.
The question about whether US launched the missiles is not really in dispute, the intent and knowledge is in dispute. NYT did a great analysis essentially concluding it was plausibly a mistake, not an intentional or indiscriminate civilian attack.
More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49739018#49741081
The US military and its sailors already showed me everything i wont to know about them when i saw the report on them shooting torpedoes at capsized boats.
> The UN mission concluded that the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school constituted an indiscriminate attack causing civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure, amounting to a war crime under international law.
> According to the report, the US relied on intelligence suggesting a senior Iranian military commander was present at the site but failed to adequately verify the information before launching the strike.
> Investigators said the failure to update targeting intelligence and confirm the building was a military objective amounted to more than mere negligence.
> “Rather, the US directed the strikes at the building of the school while being aware of a substantial risk of striking a civilian object and acting recklessly as regards the possibility that this would happen.”
See also somewhat overlooked Bloomberg story from June:
>An Analyst’s Missed Remark Surfaced in Deadly Iran School Strike Probe
>An analyst's missed remarks and US intelligence systems that weren’t connected to one another are among the missteps that investigators have surfaced while probing the cause of a missile strike on an Iranian school that killed an estimated 120 children, people familiar with the matter said.
>Years before the US attacked Iran at the end of February, an intelligence analyst examining information about potential future strike targets in Iran noticed changes at a site the US had previously characterized as a naval facility belonging to the elite wing of the Iranian military in Minab city in the southeast of the country. It was, in fact, now an elementary school.
>The analyst remarked on changes at the site in a digital intelligence tool, but that tool wasn’t linked up to the official intelligence database that the US uses to develop strike targets and the information was never conveyed to military commanders, according to people familiar with the matter who declined to be named discussing sensitive matters.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-06-26/an-analys...
That formulation guarantees that most war crimes won't be revealed as such. The militaries of the world are operating under top secrecy about what they know, knew or plan on knowing, ditto for their intent. They can claim whatever they please without regard to actual reality, proof is impossible to obtain.
Thus, under this formulation, war crimes are doubly guarded by the secrecy of two kinds of information available only to the perpetrators and protected by harsh laws again any leaks.
Assange knows, he dealt with it but I doubt he or anyone else will try to break the secrecy again given the zeal of his prosecution. To think that what he revealed was an isolated case is laughable.
There are two scenarios, one of which is a "double tap" and one which is not:
1) There are 'n' targets. The targets get hit in rapid succession, one bomb each. <- normal bombing
2) There is 1 target. It is hit once. There is a long delay, long enough for first responders to show up. The same 1 target is hit again. <- THIS is a double tap.
The IRGC base had multiple buildings. Each building was hit once. That's not what most people would call a double-tap.
Some people ran from one building to another and were hit twice. That's just... bad luck.
The real crime committed by US forces is that they didn't care to update and review their targeting information, resulting in totally unnecessary civilian deaths. Their hubris, their pride, their unfounded confidence in their own superiority resulted in a shameful atrocity.
That's bad enough.
These are all detailed in both the UN fact finding mission and the US' own investigation.
Do you hear yourself? Have you ever in your life met someone this sadistic? It was definitely a mistake. One might argue criminal negligence, but there is no way everyone in the loop here is just pure evil. That just isn't how people think in North America. It is unfathomable that a team of US military (people with families of their own no doubt), would all nod along and agree with your contention.
Unfortunately there's a very large, compelling body of evidence of the US military routinely killing civilians with double tap.
Intentionally.
This is not a negligence, this is a strategy because they get off scot free.
- https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...
- https://www.culawreview.org/journal/double-standards-in-inte...
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/23/substantial-evidenc...
- https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2013-08-01/bur...
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/2/trumps-boat-bombing...
- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-24557333
- https://lab.imedd.org/en/double-tap-the-tactic-that-is-consi...
Routine. They routinely exterminate civilians with this kind of attacks.
Where have you lived for the last 10 years?
The Vietnam and Korean wars would like to have a word.
Your belief that the US military is guided by any kind of moral or ethical line is naïve at best.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_massacre
Remember that, prior to this, the US military had been conducting many suspicious strikes on boats in the gulf. It’s not like this came out of nowhere. The culture of negligence and lack of care was well-established.
Yes, I have. In the US. Some were active military personnel at the time.
Some folks are just warped, but some folks change a lot after they have experienced war.
All the time, on the internet. People will reveal the most deranged opinions when they feel immune from consequences for them.
When you phrase it like that, I firmly believe that's exactly what happened.
Not met anyone personally like that. But I have made sure that I kept good company.
However, there was precedence in the form of Nazi Germany.
Can we be sure without evidence that this administration did not do it knowingly, given how they have been behaving thus far?
This isn't necessarily driven by sadism. A sociopath following an amoral (immoral) decision process where they draft a plan to decapitate military leadership by trying to attract them to a place to then kill them would fit the description.
And from a moral point of view, is it justifiable to kill military personnel in a military engagement that's not even framed as a war?
The claim is that "the U.S. failed in its obligation to do everything feasible to verify that it was a military objective. Updating targeting information and acting upon such information falls within the category of feasible precautions an attacking party is required to take under IHL . . . the strikes are a violation of the obligation to distinguish between civilian objects.
And:
" the Mission concluded that when targeting the school building, the U.S acted wilfully, that is with the requisite mental element of recklessness ( dolus eventualis)."
And (finally):
". . . the Mission found that these strikes constituted an indiscriminate attack in violation of the principle of distinction."
The UN report's claim is that the US negligently used outdated information which led them to think this compound hit was still a military target.
It's evident you didn't read the report and submitted a shitpost.
> It's evident you didn't read the report and submitted a shitpost.
Chill.
We should assume it was intentional.
For now I can only process it better knowing that The Red Cross Society of China allocated $200,000 to the Iranian Red Crescent Society specifically as special funds for the bereaved parents who can apply for it. Each family basically receive about an entire year of earnings, which isn't much but at least it is something to help cover funeral costs.
The guy who campaigned on ending wars sure loves killing children.
rug_sweep.gif
Vote me again so I can keep bombing more girls tomorrow?
Without action this is just a barely veiled attempt to appease the furious voters just before an election. All talk, no real will to fix this mess.
Now officials tell the public "we used old maps" when bombing a school with kids. That's a deliberate lie. It wastes our time to even want to lend any credibility to wanting to believe such a lie.
Point of clarification - GPS/GNSS does not work that way. The GPS in your phone only _listens_ to GPS signals and is not transmitting to/observable by the satellite. https://ciechanow.ski/gps/
That's... not how GPS works.
The point is that Iranian families want all of those things too. Because they're people just like you are. You can see videos of ordinary Iranians going to the market, going to work, having family over, eating a meal together and so on. It saddens and frightens me how easy it seems to dehumanize other people and basically be OK with killing them en masse.
Now I want you to think about what you'd do if you sent your 11 year old daughter to school one day and some foreign government double tapped that school with 2 Tomahawk missiles killing almost 200 people, most of them children.
We kind of do know because it's basically what happened after 9/11. We spent $8T+ on a 20 year war to kill over a million people in vengeance that really didn't do anything else. Remember that Afghanistan offered to hand bin Laden over after 9/11 [1].
The Trump administration tried (badly) lying about what happened. First it never happened. Second, it wasn't us. But nobody else has Tomahawk missiles so that was never going to work.
The only question is where the targeting information came from and what verification was done. I am not convinced that Israel didn't supply this information so the US military would commit atrocities to keep them in a war that Israel had desperately wanted for decades. Every president since Reagan had been begged by Israeli PMs to invade Iran. All of them refused. It's widely believed that Netanyahu threatened to use nukes if Obama wouldn't do it. Obama called his bluff. Until Trump. And here we are.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...
I'm so proud to be an American today :-(
In a war mistakes are made and people will die as a result. But that doesn't mean they're war crimes. Blaming the U.S. whilst leaving Iran alone, which blatantly attacks civilian infrastructure, makes the U.N. look biased and nefarious.
Trump should close the U.N. headquarters in New York and demolish it. Nothing useful is coming out of the U.N. these days anyway. It has outlived its purpose.
NYT did an excellent analysis showing that the US probably did intentionally target the building, believing it to be part of the nearby compound that received several direct strikes. This analysis is really good [1]
The definition of war crime is not "Killed civilians" it is "targeted civilians" or "reckless indiscriminate attacks". My understanding of the NYT analysis is that this was very plausibly misunderstood to still be part of the iran national guard compound.
Everyone gets their own opinion on this. There were 900 or so strikes in the first 12h, and only one school hit, and that school was actually part of the compound before. A horrific accident that was brought on by unnecessary hostilities, i think.
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/us/politics/iran-school-m...
Unless otherwise provided, a person shall be criminally responsible and liable for punishment for a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court only if the material elements are committed with intent and knowledge.
A mistake of fact shall be a ground for excluding criminal responsibility only if it negates the mental element required by the crime.
A Iranian military structure was converted into a school.
After conversion, the rest of the naval base remained there (< 100m away).
Missile strikes hit both the base and the adjacent school.
---
FYI, it's not unusual for schools to be part of military bases. The U.S. itself operates over a 100. [1]
The US military and its sailors already showed me everything i wont to know about them when i saw the report on them shooting torpedoes at capsized boats. Like i said before, if any US person is on a boat and need help, i will still do it, because anybody not helping on the sea is an inhuman piece of shit, but i will keep my distance.
It absolutely does not excuse anything, but I suppose that might explain the denial at first. I cannot explain any further denial though.
Edit: Actually, others pointed out that at first the narrative was that Iran did it. That's indeed true that the media used that; perhaps one can even build up a timestamp of media reporting falseness here. I forgot which media reported the above lie first.
Israel for very obvious reasons[0] has plenty of interest in freeing Iran from its regime as well as an interest in weakening the regime.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani...
War is never pretty or perfect. Winning a war comes with great cost
So, that's over, then? We changed the regime and now things are better?
Yes? How is that a reason to kill even more Iranians, especially schoolgirls?
If America succeeded, it would change the head, steal oil and keep the regime there to keep control on locals. Like in Venezuela. Maybe committing few atrocities on top of it.
But also of course, it would then invade Cuba and Greenland and god knows who.
Invading a country and wanting to steal their resources at any cost, a cost as large as needed, is a crime against humanity.
The USA is not defending itself, it is just trying to control Irans oil to increase the power of American economic elites. Billionaires want more power, children, women and men die indiscriminately because of that.
And, you are totally right. Billionaires does not care that winning a war comes with great cost, because the cost is for USA service men and for all Iranians.
The 'we' in your first sentence is not the same 'we' that is in your second sentence.
I don't think you've done this intentionally but this kind of talk is how propagandists conflate what the masses want and do with what people in power want and do.
This conflation is hugely problematic - it's like saying sometimes we go to the movies, sometimes we murder children. No, no, 'we' are not murdering children, some people are murdering children and those people are a problem.
The IRGC/regime is what prevents them from living normal lives. The Iranian diaspora is protesting in favor or removing the regime since they know who the real enemy is.[0]
The USA has been dropping bombs on innocent people on average for the past 25 years every 15 minutes.
The only force capable of reining in the US’ out of control military industrial complex, is the American people themselves. Until they do, the atrocities continue unabated.
That being said bombing children is always a tragedy and the US should be doing everything it can to learn from this and not make these kinds of mistakes.
Some of it is publicly available on videos for 15+ years, nobody cares: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0
I think the war crime is at 9:31. They kill unarmed people picking up bodies. Maybe they figure they're insurgents too, but that seems like a wild assumption, also the drone operator sounds trigger-happy. Is there any good reason for this?
People do care, including Americans. These Mid East wars aren't popular partially because it's known or even assumed that US soldiers are committing war crimes there.
For now, this means voting Democrat and supporting Democrats for office.
Donald Trump has turned the Republican party into a cult of personality to support a kleptocracy. The GOP is no longer the party of conservative values. The rule of law, respect for traditional mores or institutions, and personal integrity have all been defenestrated by the Trump administration.
Are the Democrats perfect? Of course not. But under the current system, the United States has a zero-sum two party system, and this means voting for one of the two parties. Making room for third parties means adjusting the rules (eg. ranked choice voting, or other). These ideas are worth pursuing. As long as we're stuck in a two party system, this means voting for the lesser of two evils.
Nihilists will scoff at this and point to everything wrong that happened under Obama or Biden. They'll says Democrats are no better than Republicans. They're wrong. At best, they're misguided. At worst, they're actually trying to bring an end to democratic government (that's a lower-case "d" for democracy).
The Democrats are imperfect. The Republican party under the current leadership are far, far worse. It's not even close.
Get out and vote.
I guess the trick for me is (1) convincing others and (2) convincing others to give a shit.
There's certainly evidence that the US was neglegent in relying on old information without verifying. That's serious and reprehensible, but I don't know that that rises to the level of a war crime.
I'll add that it's not what I want my country's military to be doing and that if I had any power, there would be consequences for the people involved in decision making that led to this, as well as changes in procedure to reduce this type of mistake in the future, and a settlement paid to the people affected by this strike.
We waged an AI-directed attack based on decade+ maps. That should be criminal.
You just linked to a standard military tactic
The problem is fighting unethical enemies, because they do shit like use ambulances as troop transport, have soldiers dress the same as civilians, and given any kid old enough to shoot a rifle.
To your post more specifically, is there is no one holding these unethical enemies responsible. There are no history books, or journalists, or wikipedia articles about the insane shit they do.
The Taliban has a base where they truck in young boys to "service" the officers and it's lost to time. The US has a single ethics catastrophe, and they are held up for it for decades...
You can be unethical and still profoundly incompetent.
"Families and survivors interviewed by Iranian media reported that the school was struck twice, with a brief interval between strikes. Several sources reported that the first munition struck the lower floor of the school, leading the principal and teachers to move the children to a prayer room on the upper floor. A second munition then struck the upper floor, killing many of the children."
Is there another doc that contradicts the timing or mentions first responders? I'm kinda pissed that The Guardian doesn't link anything.
https://www.reutersconnect.com/item/the-primary-school-targe...
EDIT: and here's Forensic Architecture https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/airstrikes-o...
> Mohammad Yazdanpanah, a driver with the local fire department, said: ‘About half an hour, maybe forty minutes after we had arrived at the scene, there were two additional explosions, one after another. At that time there were perhaps one thousand to fifteen hundred people gathered in the compound and around the area. When the first explosion happened, we immediately threw ourselves to the ground to seek shelter. Just a few seconds later—perhaps three or four seconds afterward—a second explosion followed.’
That’s a manned AH-64 Apache attack helicopter with a pilot and gunner.
Can you give a source please?
FWiW we'd be hearing about a whole lot more if it weren't for House Speaker Mike Johnson shutting things down early to prevent a vote on a bipartisan impeachment motion brought forward against Hegseth.
A number of people on both sides believe him to be both inept and 'accidentally' doing a war crime or three.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/us/politics/iran-school-m...
> The UN mission concluded that the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school constituted an indiscriminate attack causing civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure, amounting to a war crime under international law.
Again, because this was preventable and the US acted recklessly and without regard for civilians ("indiscriminate"), going so far as to ignore the warnings of its own commanders.
Unless otherwise provided, a person shall be criminally responsible and liable for punishment for a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court only if the material elements are committed with intent and knowledge.
A mistake of fact shall be a ground for excluding criminal responsibility only if it negates the mental element required by the crime.
It's something worth arguing about, but I dont think it's open-and-shut.
why "The UN mission" conclusions are blindly considered as some high quality analytics?
It was never given as a fact.
Was literally "in my opinion" speculation. A dumb opinion? Okay. But not statement of fact.
Just in the instance that was chosen.
Is there a "reckless endangerment" or "manslaughter" equivalent in the war-crimes sphere?
Maybe it was intentional too ?
Maybe if the schools was built recently there'd be a case. That's not the case, its as converted a full decade ago. We just didn't bother updating our maps and intel before launching missiles.
"Why the fuck would you convert former soldier barracks, still located on an active base, to a kids school and never update the publicly available maps? How fucking dumb are you?"
More importantly, if Israel wants something, it's not our job.
They certainly want it gone, weakened is the fallback.
> Nobody is putting a replacement in, not even the exiled shah's family.
What Israel and the US ultimately want is not the same thing as what they will currently put resources behind achieving.
> while also making dubious WMD claims
What is dubious about the WMD claims? Even the IAEA has said Iran has not been complying with safeguards.[0] It's quite obvious based on their enrichment percentages that they have a nuclear weapons program.
> More importantly, if Israel wants something, it's not our job.
Both Israel and the US want the regime gone or at least weakened. Sure, US/Israeli interests aren't always fully aligned but they are often similar. The Iranian regime is probably only an existential threat to Israel in the near term but that doesn't mean the regime is not still a threat to US regional interests. The world shouldn't allow terrorist organizations like the IRGC to obtain nukes.
And this is Israel's interest only. Just because we've also gotten tangled up with UAE, Jordan, etc as a result of catering to their interests doesn't make it our own. Netanyahu called Trump and forced his hand on this, administration admitted it. It's either that or, at best, Trump wanting to manipulate oil markets.
> The world shouldn't allow terrorist organizations like the IRGC to obtain nukes.
It's just us. Our NATO allies don't want this war, even though they're more exposed to Mid East oil. What really shows that we're suckers, our adversaries like Russia and China don't care to get involved either, and they're even closer. They must be happy we're focusing so hard on the Mid East at the expense of say Ukraine.
If this was a military command center, this would still be a war crime. The US was not at war with Iran before it attacked them.
Unprovoked aggression is completely wrong.
Well that's different from whether or not they have a nuclear weapons program, and I think one would probably describe their nuclear weapons program as being damaged but not fully destroyed. I don't think the existence of the nuclear weapons program is reasonably in question however.
> And this is Israel's interest only. Just because we've also gotten tangled up with UAE, Jordan, etc as a result of catering to their interests doesn't make it our own.
Saudi Arabia also wanted the US to attack Iran.[0] Most middle eastern countries seem to consider Iran to be a serious threat.
> Netanyahu called Trump and forced his hand on this, administration admitted it.
It's not super clear what happened here, my interpretation was more that Netanyahu may have somewhat forced Trump's hand on the specific timing of the initial strikes but not really on the decision to attack itself. Hard to say though.
> It's either that or, at best, Trump wanting to manipulate oil markets.
I think what happened is Trump got a bit over confident from the relatively successful Maduro abduction.
> It's just us. Our NATO allies don't want this war, even though they're more exposed to Mid East oil.
I'm pretty sure our NATO allies don't want Iran getting nukes either, it seems the disagreement is mostly in regards to how to prevent that.
> What really shows that we're suckers, our adversaries like Russia and China don't care to get involved either, and they're even closer.
Russia is already clearly involved...on Iran's side. China like usual tends to just play all sides.
> They must be happy we're focusing so hard on the Mid East at the expense of say Ukraine.
Yeah, the US should be doing a lot more to help Ukraine, although at least one of Russia's key allies(Iran) has been degraded a good bit.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/27/saudi-arabia-u...
There were 900 strikes in 12h, and only one target involved a strike on a school, and huge coincidence that target was a dozen meters from a military compound and was in fact part of that military compound not long ago.
It's quite easy to accept that this was a horrific mistake. Whether you agree with the idea of striking Iran at all is up to you, but once they "went hot", precision strikes on military targets were successful in 900 cases, and it's plausible that one precision strike was issued incorrectly.
It doesn't bring back the kiddos. It also doesn't mean it's a war crime. It's right to be angry about that strike or even the larger war if you oppose it, but spurious legal justifications for outrage aren't required - it can be wrong even when legally justified or plausibly just a mistake.
> At least 165 people, mostly schoolgirls, were killed. One official cited by The New York Times said, “We are still looking into the strike, but the evidence increasingly points to US aircraft as the source of the school being hit.” US authorities have acknowledged the inquiry but have not officially claimed responsibility.
Any ways I think it's a little obfuscated because the initial wave of airstrikes started at 11:22am and there were 9 in total, several hitting near the school and at least 2 hitting the school directly. All of this happened in less than 2 minutes according to a joint investigation by Sky News and Forensic Architecture.[0] I think that's also the source of the confusion of whether this was a "triple tap" or "double tap"
[0] https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/airstrikes-o...
I'm still thinking it's not after families or first responders arrived, because the death toll would've included more than children and teachers. He said 1500 people were gathered.
I say usually, because there are some exceptions and nukes are one of them, they make genocide a viable war strategy. But even nuking Vietnam would not have worked, cause you will simply get nuked back.
I'm not trying to make excuses for the USA here, it's an abhorrent thing and I do agree, much more care should've been taken.
No one is suggesting other kids schools are "fair game" so just calm down a bit?
The UK, the US, Germany, et al are therefore not "responsible government" ?
Iran is an old country, leaving aside the assorted historical and urban settlements dating back to some 7,000 years before present time, the Median and Achaemenid Empires there data back to ~ 600 BC.
A lot of buildings and places have prior history.
It wouldn't put it past me if the IRGC steered the USA towards the school for this to happen, that's the kind of people they actually are. They kill protestors, why wouldn't they kill a school full of kids, what's the difference to them?
We still continued to have Civil Defense drills in case of nuclear attack.
Iraq was also a war crime.
The reason Putin is a war criminal is because of his unprovoked attack of Ukraine.
Let's say I grant this. The problem you run into is these terrorist groups have not attacked the US. The last time Iran did anything aggressive towards the US was in the 1980s.
In fact, Iran has aided the US in going after common enemies like ISIS/ISIL and Al-Qaeda.
The terrorist groups supported by Iran have primarily been groups fighting Israel, not the US. That's what makes it particularly unprovoked.
In fact, the US has a stronger argument to attack Saudi Arabia than it does Iran because they actually have funded terrorists that directly attacked the US. Heck, you could argue that the US is justified in directly attacking Russia with this sort of argument.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volker_T%C3%BCrk
[2] US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth commented at a news conference on March 2, 2026, about “stupid rules of engagement,” suggesting that they may interfere with “fight[ing] to win.” These remarks are concerning in light of Hegseth’s actions in the past year that have weakened US military posts and mechanisms intended to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law, also known as the laws of war. - https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/03/02/us-defense-secretarys-me...
[3] "We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters." - https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4318...
This sounds like extreme hand-waving to me.
But nothing anywhere in any of these increasingly pathological threads do I see evidence of a war crime. Tragedy yes, intentional crime, no. Preventable yes, cold blooded intentional child murder no.
It was clearly a tragedy. Very few Americans--certainly I've never met one--support that strike in retrospect. Instead they are angry that such a terrible mistake was possible and they generally want a thorough investigation and targeting procedure reforms to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Americans hold their military to a high moral standard. But wars don't have to be fought so cleanly. Certainly the Golden Horde had no compunction about genocide. If acknowledging our shared humanity with innocent victims and expressing remorse for their deaths is ridiculed, then we're primed for a descent into nihilism, wanton cruelty, and mass slaughter.
EDIT: @Hikikomori, I cannot reply to your post, but I am happy to engage if you follow HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument
> Please don't post shallow dismissals
What the war criminals that have run your country for decades have done to other nations, they are now going to do to yours.
Protest, inform yourself, demand that your peers are informed, and do not for one instance just let apathy rule. Get out there on the streets every single time, write your representatives, use whatever tepid remains of your ‘democracy’ you have left. Divest yourself of any investments in the military industrial complex - and be damned sure you don’t support it, in any way whatsoever.
Demand justice for your own war criminals at a higher pitch and tempo than the call to eradicate cultures deemed inferior by those very war criminals.
What they do to other nations they will do to yours. Never forget this.
Use your democracy while you still can.
Make sure to vote in this November! Encourage your friends and family to do so as well. Start a YouTube channel; get yourself heard. Reach out to DNC, obviously red party is not an option, tell them you want to help with outreach.
Make sure to vote blue in this November!
In modern militaries though, the expectation is that you will just leave civilians alone.
The worst thing people would do is surrendering in those cases.
Iran with 7,000 years of history can't really leave unused sites idle - and everywhere there has history.
> It wouldn't put it past me if the IRGC steered the USA towards the school for this to happen, that's the kind of people they actually are.
Uh-huh. Okay. That's quite the long con child sacrifice conspiracy theory you're projecting there to cover up for what's more likely to be general incompetence caused by a rushed strike order in the context of a POTUS with no plan.
Not sure why you're such an IRGC apologist but do it somewhere else?
Just because Iran has a fucked government (that we helped install, by the way) doesn't let us off the hook or justify stooping to their level.
Even the Russian invasion of Ukraine wasn't unprovoked. Yeah Ukraine didn't attack Russia, but they did try to join NATO, then after Germany blocked that, the US was getting involved there in more covert ways. Ukraine overturned pro-Russia Yanukovych's presidential election in '04 which saw meddling from both Russia and US, then he reran and won in '10, then Ukrainian protestors forcibly removed him in '14.
I think the least provoked thing was the Iraq War, cause Bush blamed Saddam Hussein for 9/11 and fake WMDs. He was a legit problem ever since invading Iran and Kuwait, but that wasn't the reason for the war.
For the 2024 conflict I see no indicator that US troops were involved, other than providing defensive support for Israel. Iran didn't target the US even as it was shooting down their missiles and drones.
2024 Hezbollah killed US troops in Jordan. Houthis also attacked US ships if you count that.
And yes, the US has a valid argument for attacking Saudi Arabia for funding terrorists that have attacked the US. That they have not does not in any way bolster your argument.
Sorry, there’s just no rational argument for the idea that the US attacking Iran was an unprovoked war of aggression and thus a war crime.
Productive discussion would be if you go read that report before bringing it here, and tell what material evidence they have for that specific incident?
US picked some target through some classified protocol, what evidence states that there was some reckless in process?
Please refer to the report [1] and read the following sections (they are too long to paste here):
- II (full section)
- IV.B.1 (full section)
- IV.B.2.88-89
- IV.B.2.95-96
- V.B (full section)
The report itself attributes its sources. If that's not enough, the DoD's own preliminary investigation produced the outdated-targeting finding. Pre-strike imagery of the school is public.
[1] https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies...
Nice. https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/inside-the-pro-israel-inf...
And you know what? You're right. Those are all terrorist organizations.
If there is one thing you can all learn from Europe is how to do a protest that cannot be ignored by your administration
Nope. It was a proxy of Hezbollah who Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah all condemned. And after the US attacked Iran in retaliation, they again de-escalated.
> Houthis also attacked US ships if you count that.
This is probably the best example of the point you are making. It was because of Israel's actions in Gaza, but yes, this is a case of an Iranian proxy attacking US ships.
Look, I'm not saying Iran is great or their government good. But I am saying they have been pretty level headed towards the US for quite some time. The main reason the US comes into any sort of conflict with them is Israel and Israeli aggression in the region.
Tyrants feed on the belief they can't be removed.